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apathypopepopularitypopulistpowerfulpracticeprimatesprincipalprisonpro-choicepro-lifeprobioticsprofitprogressprohibitionpubertypublic broadcastingpublic healthpublic librariespublic transportationrapereaction videoreadersreality TVrebellionrecommendationsrejectionrelgionreproductionretro gamingreviewsrichesroad tripsrole modelssafety seatsatisfactionschadenfreudeschool lunchscience fictionscoresseasonsselfself-comforting methodsselfishnessseniorsexesshop localshynesssibling rivalrysick daysimple livingsingle-child familiesskin careslaverysocial anxietysocial networkingsocial worksocialismsoulspace songsspousespringstage frightstate senatorsstealingstep parentsstressstripperssubjectivitysuburbssuccesstempertestthinkersthriftshopthumb suckingtiny homestop tentouchtradetreatstreestrick or treattrollstroubleturn the other cheektween ageuncertaintyunityunpopularvacationveterinariansvetsvinegarvintageviolence against womenvloggingvotewar taxwarm fuzzieswarm fuzzyweb seriesweirdwellnesswhite privilegewide feetwinterwisdomwomen's rightsworker's rightsworld religionyogazooThis Ambiguous Lifehttp://thisambiguouslife.blogspot.com/noreply@blogger.com (Becky Carleton)Blogger985125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1498105551688934461.post-8700034107893999117Sun, 24 Sep 2017 15:25:00 +00002017-09-24T10:25:52.554-05:00#takeakneecurrent eventsfootballpoliticsprofessional sportsracismsocial changesocial justiceAmericans eventually get around to doing the right thing: the NFL finally takes a kneeI'm swelling with pride today, after <a href="https://www.pri.org/stories/2017-09-24/after-trump-tweetstorm-two-nfl-teams-take-knee-during-national-anthem-london?utm_source=Facebook&amp;utm_medium=SocialFlow" target="_blank">seeing the majority of two NFL teams #takeaknee and link arms during our national anthem</a> despite the fact that<br /><br />1) I hate football<br /><br />and<br /><br />2) I'm disgusted that it took over a year for other NFL players and owners to get on board with <a href="https://twitter.com/kaepernick7?lang=en" target="_blank">Colin Kaepernick's</a> brave, peaceful protest that began last year and has left him unemployed this year.<br /><br />Fitting that this protest is in London, since I immediately thought of the famous quote from Prime Minister Winston Churchill:<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-8Qc5OaFbxog/WcfMTcYtUmI/AAAAAAAAH9U/BmM8J_nuA9EErQQeBH69rVJ5JudY-G5ZgCLcBGAs/s1600/Americans%2Bdo%2Bthe%2Bright%2Bthing%2Bchurchill.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="616" height="320" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-8Qc5OaFbxog/WcfMTcYtUmI/AAAAAAAAH9U/BmM8J_nuA9EErQQeBH69rVJ5JudY-G5ZgCLcBGAs/s320/Americans%2Bdo%2Bthe%2Bright%2Bthing%2Bchurchill.jpg" width="246" /></a></div><br />http://thisambiguouslife.blogspot.com/2017/09/americans-eventually-get-around-to.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Becky Carleton)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1498105551688934461.post-2301764669087878453Fri, 22 Sep 2017 15:16:00 +00002017-09-22T10:16:46.344-05:00Dadfamily dysfunctionold ageSelfish rant: When your day off is not *your* day off. Damnit! It's my day off. I was gonna enjoy a little "me" time today, but I just got a call from Dad. He's back in the hospital. He fell, again, while running errands at his bank.<br /><br />He's fine. Incredibly. Especially for a 90-year-old man. No broken bones. Just banged up. I'm on my way to pick him up and make sure he gets home safely.<br /><br />The other day Dad called me to report that his car wouldn't start. He wanted me to have my husband Will leave work, drive thirty minutes to Dad's house, and check on it.<br /><br />Me: "Hey, Dad, let's troubleshoot over the phone before we bother Will. Have you gotten gas lately?"<br /><br />Dad: "Yeah, just yesterday."<br /><br />Me: "OK. I want you to go out and unscrew your gas cap, screw it back on til it clicks, and then try to start your car again."<br /><br />Ten minutes later...<br /><br />Dad: "Hey, Becky! It started right up. I didn't know you could fix cars!"<br /><br />Evidently I can do a lot of things I never thought I could do. Like take care of my dad.<br /><br />When I was a teen, my dad gave me a laminated quarter and told me to put it in my wallet, in case I ever found myself out somewhere "drunk and stranded or something" so I could give him a call. This was back in the day when there were payphones all over the city and all you needed was a quarter to make a call. This was also back in the day when Dad and I regularly screamed at each other, slammed doors in each others faces, and generally tried to stay as far away from each other as possible. So, even back then, it warmed my heart that Dad was thinking of my safety. We might not like each other much, but, in spite of ourselves, we care about each other.<br /><br />Now it's Dad who calls me for help. It's so weird. If you live long enough, you become someone you never thought you'd be. Dad has grown a teeny tiny bit less angry and selfish over the years. I have grown a teeny tiny bit less angry and impatient over the years. I'll never enjoy hanging out with my dad. He's a pain in my ass. We disagree on nearly everything from politics to religion to what is considered to be "good" music. But, he's my dad. And I'm my father's daughter. And, together, after all the struggles, we just might figure out not just how to care for each other, but why in the hell we do.http://thisambiguouslife.blogspot.com/2017/09/selfish-rant-when-your-day-off-is-not.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Becky Carleton)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1498105551688934461.post-1063721852016519486Fri, 22 Sep 2017 14:16:00 +00002017-09-22T09:17:27.504-05:00book reviewfamily dysfunctionmental healthmoviessuicideOrdinary People: a rare movie that is even better than the book<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2049746.Ordinary_People" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img border="0" alt="Ordinary People" src="https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1225303338m/2049746.jpg" /></a><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2049746.Ordinary_People">Ordinary People</a> by <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/30830.Judith_Guest">Judith Guest</a><br/>My rating: <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2131602234">3 of 5 stars</a><br /><br />Don't get me wrong: this is a good book. Definitely worth your time if you grew up in a dysfunctional family, and/or if you're a fan of Anne Tyler, Anne Lamott, John Irving, or Alison Bechdel. But, this is one of those rare times when I actually like the movie better than the book. Not because the book is crappy, but because the movie is sublime. Directed by Robert Redford, featuring four outstanding actors--Mary Tyler Moore, Donald Sutherland, Timothy Hutton, and Judd Hirsch, "Ordinary People" is one of my favorite movies of all time. Judd Hirsch is the best fictional shrink, evah. I'm convinced that if I'd had Judd Hirsch as a therapist when I was a teen, my mental health struggles would have lessened far earlier than they did in reality. <br/><br/><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/39952044-becky-carleton">View all my reviews</a>http://thisambiguouslife.blogspot.com/2017/09/ordinary-people-rare-movie-that-even.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Becky Carleton)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1498105551688934461.post-3408764963320887889Fri, 22 Sep 2017 12:41:00 +00002017-09-22T07:41:47.697-05:00book reviewdogsfunnyDog Is My Co-Pilot: book review<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/667500.Dog_is_My_Co_Pilot" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img border="0" alt="Dog is My Co-Pilot: Great Writers on the World's Oldest Friendship" src="https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1320547557m/667500.jpg" /></a><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/667500.Dog_is_My_Co_Pilot">Dog is My Co-Pilot: Great Writers on the World's Oldest Friendship</a> by <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1153336.Claudia_Kawczynska">Claudia Kawczynska</a><br/>My rating: <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2131505715">4 of 5 stars</a><br /><br />As a huge fan of both Alice Walker and dogs, I knew I'd love this book. I usually check out books from the public library, but this book is so special I bought a copy for my home library. Unfortunately my two puppies discovered it on a low book shelf and devoured it. They give it five stars. I give it four. Too bad Goodreads doesn't allow 4.5 ratings. The fact that I'm keeping a puppy-chewed book instead of throwing it away with all the other material possessions my fur babies have ruined shows how great this book is. And, perhaps, how bad my lovely beasts are. <br/><br/><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/39952044-becky-carleton">View all my reviews</a><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-zz8hOEV4_iA/WcUEwzC9dvI/AAAAAAAAH9A/wQNDa1frUkM4mBd2EkW6c7ABbfdqxpWVQCLcBGAs/s1600/Dog%2Bis%2Bmy%2Bco-pilot.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-zz8hOEV4_iA/WcUEwzC9dvI/AAAAAAAAH9A/wQNDa1frUkM4mBd2EkW6c7ABbfdqxpWVQCLcBGAs/s320/Dog%2Bis%2Bmy%2Bco-pilot.jpg" width="320" height="240" data-original-width="960" data-original-height="720" /></a>http://thisambiguouslife.blogspot.com/2017/09/dog-is-my-co-pilot-book-review.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Becky Carleton)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1498105551688934461.post-8449657484710932689Sat, 16 Sep 2017 14:31:00 +00002017-09-16T09:31:42.339-05:00body acceptancefat phobiaHealth at Every Size®My Body Is Good EnoughI was four when I got a <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3411209" target="_blank">tonsillectomy</a><br />I was four when I began to "put on weight"<br />I was, also, sexually abused when I was four<br />I remember hungering for some sort of comfort<br />My body is good<br />At finding ways to calm my anxious brain<br /><br />I was sent to Weight Watchers in third grade<br />I was diagnosed with anorexia in fifth grade<br />My body survived a self-induced famine<br />Famine lowers your metabolism<br />My body is good<br />At attempting to prevent itself from devouring itself<br /><br />In seventh grade I was told by a doctor that I needed to lose twenty pounds<br />In seventh grade I was 5'3" and weighed 150 pounds<br />In fifth grade I was 5'3" and weighed 79 pounds<br />In fifth grade my psychologist and my parents threatened to hospitalize me<br />If I didn't stop starving myself and gain weight<br />My body is good<br />At being a yo-yo<br /><br />I was twenty-three when I got out of my latest bad relationship<br />I was twenty-three when I started living life for myself<br />I stopped drinking pop every day<br />I limited junk food to special occasions<br />(Some special occasions are when life is shitty)<br />My body is good<br />At treating itself<br /><br />In my late twenties I was diagnosed with polycystic ovary syndrome<br />And told I'd have trouble conceiving when I was ready to become a mother<br />At thirty-five, I gave birth to an unbelievably beautiful baby<br />After six months of fertility treatment<br />My body is good<br />At creating life, with a little help<br /><br />At thirty-six I knew I was getting old<br />"Of advanced maternal age" is the medical term<br />If I wanted a big family, I couldn't wait too long<br />At thirty-six I went back to the fertility doctor<br />And asked for a little help to get pregnant again<br />He told me to come back when I lost twenty pounds<br />I told him to fuck off<br />I told him my husband and I would conceive without his help<br />My body is good<br />At believing in the power of love<br /><br />At thirty-seven I conceived without fertility treatment<br />We did it! We did it! We did it!<br />My husband's body and my body, together, are good<br />At making miracles<br /><br />At thirty-seven I had a miscarriage<br />I never conceived again<br />My body is good<br />At grieving<br /><br />A couple of years after I had a miscarriage<br />I got a newsletter from my fertility doctor's office<br />It had a big, celebratory article in it<br />About how my fertility doctor himself was recovering<br />He was only in his fifties, fit and slim, and yet he had a heart attack<br />His body is good<br />At recovering from heart surgery<br />My brain is good<br />At what the Germans call "schadenfreude"<br /><br />At forty I read a book by Dr. Linda Bacon<br />An ironic name for a health practicioner<br />The book, Health at Every Size, changed my mind<br />The philosophy, Health at Every Size, saved my life<br />My body is good<br />At eating primarily plants, moving in pleasurable ways, and loving itself<br /><br />My body is forty-six now<br />My body is healthier than ever<br />I love my husband more than ever<br />Our beautiful daughter never ceases to amaze me<br />I have the best job in the world, singing and dancing and reading stories with little kids<br />My body is good<br />At living life to its fullest<br /><br />I am fat<br />Who knows why<br />I am healthy<br />Despite what the diet industry says<br />I am happy<br />My body is good<br />At celebrating both the struggles and the victories in this life<br /><br />I am fat<br />Who knows why<br />I deserve love, and respect, and care<br />Regardless of the answer to the question of, "Why?"<br />My body is good<br />Enough<br /><br /><br /><br /><br />http://thisambiguouslife.blogspot.com/2017/09/my-body-is-good-enough.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Becky Carleton)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1498105551688934461.post-8625812975157716722Fri, 15 Sep 2017 20:07:00 +00002017-09-15T15:07:57.579-05:00fat phobiaHealth at Every Size®My Good DoctorMy good doctor quit practicing last year to pursue some other career aspiration, and I've been avoiding finding a new doc ever since. I've been diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder by my former, good doc, due to the sexual abuse I survived as a young child, and also because of the horrifying experience of being sent to Weight Watchers in third grade, which resulted in my diagnosis of anorexia nervosa by fifth grade. I also think one of my PTSD triggers is getting examined by some of the shitty, fat phobic doctors I've seen over the years. Which is why I loved my former, good doc. She treated me as a whole, complex person and not just a number on the scale, and I'm the healthiest I've ever been because of her care.<br /><br />And now she's gone. I feel like she broke up with me, and I have to say, I'm a little bitter. Sure, I'm happy for her that she's on the journey to fulfilling life long dreams, but what about meeeeee? Here I am all awkwardly searching for THE ONE, like a new divorcee on Match.com. I'm back in the game, ready for a new good doctor, but suspicious of them all.<br /><br />Six months ago I had a brief little rebound. A quick visit with one of the physicians assistants from the practice to get my psych meds refilled, and it went OK, but there was certainly nothing earth shattering about it. It was just a fling. She wasn't shitty at all. But we weren't ready to commit, she, being a physician's assistant, and me needing someone my insurance would approve as a primary care physician.<br /><br />Now, after suffering with what seems to be either poison ivy or eczema since June, I finally scheduled an appointment with a new doc in the same practice. I was nervous about meeting her, as I always am when I am being examined by a new doc. As a recovered anorexic who is now fat, and a Health at Every Size advocate, my experiences with some shitty fat phobic docs, like abusive ex boyfriends and girlfriends, plus, having heard countless tales from other fat, Health at Every Size advocates about their shitty exes--doctors who took one look at the number on the scale and wanted to treat them for a so-called weight problem rather than performing the diagnostic tests they would perform on someone whose number on the scale is lower--has made me mighty twitchy whenever I find myself on a new examination table.<br /><br />But, to my great relief and surprise, this new doc I saw today is good. Yes, I do have a bad case of poison ivy, and yes, I can have a prescription for it without having to dwell on the number on the scale. My worries, subsided. There's hope out there, folks! Not all docs are shitty and yes, I deserve to be treated with the respect and the care we all deserve, regardless of our size.<br /><br />You know, stress is harmful to our bodies. I look forward to the day when all doctors are good doctors like mine, docs who understand that it's not the number on the scale that's harming us fat people, but it's the way some shitty people in power want to use it to oppress us that is. If you have a shitty, fat phobic doctor, get out of that relationship, gurrl, as quick as you can.http://thisambiguouslife.blogspot.com/2017/09/my-good-doctor.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Becky Carleton)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1498105551688934461.post-8425352291467497336Tue, 29 Aug 2017 19:42:00 +00002017-08-29T14:51:48.033-05:00Katiemental healththerapyyouth mental healthA Grateful Witness<div class="m_-1052254274788274470p1" style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I just scheduled our eleven-year old daughter Katie's last appointment with her therapist. She's made such an improvement this year that he sees no reason for her to continue cognitive therapy on a regular basis. I feel like we need some sort of graduation ceremony to celebrate.</span></span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif;">It's been an enlightening journey. My own mental health care as a child was pretty shitty. I never graduated from therapy. I'm a therapy drop out. I'd go for a bit and then I quit going after I felt like it was unhelpful or pointless. I tried several therapists for over three decades, but I never felt like I was getting the help I needed.&nbsp;</span></span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif;">Seven years ago, after much self-help reading (Dr. Harriet Lerner's books are the best, but all in all Dr. Linda Bacon's book, Health at Every Size, saved my life) and introspective, expressive blogging, I quit seeing my latest in a long line of therapists. Not because she thought I was ready to go it alone, but because I couldn't justify paying her thousands of dollars when I felt more relief from expressing myself on my free blogger account.</span></span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif;">Still, I've never had the feeling of closure from therapy that my daughter is about to experience. I'm so happy for her. And a tad jeal--no, not jealous. Wistful. But mostly, immensely proud.</span></span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif;">It's not perfect, but our society's treatment of people with mental illness has improved an incredible amount in my lifetime. Surely my daughter's journey will be filled with ups and downs, but her sights will hopefully always stay focused forward. I remain, as always, a grateful witness.</span></span></div>http://thisambiguouslife.blogspot.com/2017/08/a-grateful-witness.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Becky Carleton)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1498105551688934461.post-3009122855937777366Sat, 12 Aug 2017 19:19:00 +00002017-08-12T14:32:03.960-05:00My Dad, the Cat Guy<div style="color: #454545; font-family: '.SF UI Text'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;.sfuitext&quot;; font-size: 17pt;">I took my 90 year-old dad shopping for some pants this morning. When I arrived to pick him up, I was greeted by his pet cat.</span></div><div style="color: #454545; font-family: '.SF UI Text'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;"><span style="font-family: &quot;.sfuitext&quot;; font-size: 17pt;"></span><br /></div><div style="color: #454545; font-family: '.SF UI Text'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;.sfuitext&quot;; font-size: 17pt;">WTF?&nbsp;</span></div><div style="color: #454545; font-family: '.SF UI Text'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;"><span style="font-family: &quot;.sfuitext&quot;; font-size: 17pt;"></span><br /></div><div style="color: #454545; font-family: '.SF UI Text'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;.sfuitext&quot;; font-size: 17pt;">This is the man who told my sister that he could never move in with me because of all my pets. I only have three dogs and one cat. I'm not like some animal hoarder or something. It's so annoying. I don't even want the old man to move in with me--I was just being nice when I offered, so my sister wouldn't get stuck taking him in. Again. And still, it hurts my feelings that he won't graciously accept my offer of our spare bedroom.&nbsp;</span></div><div style="color: #454545; font-family: '.SF UI Text'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;"><span style="font-family: &quot;.sfuitext&quot;; font-size: 17pt;"></span><br /></div><div style="color: #454545; font-family: '.SF UI Text'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;.sfuitext&quot;; font-size: 17pt;">I was just kidding when I said he had to share the room with our cat. We don't confine our feline to any small space. She comes and goes, inside or outside, as she pleases. As most cat lovers know, what pleases Kitty pleases the whole family.</span></div><div style="color: #454545; font-family: '.SF UI Text'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;"><span style="font-family: &quot;.sfuitext&quot;; font-size: 17pt;"></span><br /></div><div style="color: #454545; font-family: '.SF UI Text'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;.sfuitext&quot;; font-size: 17pt;">Dad's no cat lover, but when I pulled into his driveway and saw the cat on his front porch, it made him look like he's at least kinda a cat guy. When the eff did Dad become a cat guy? This is the man who, when I was a teen, allowed us to have a cat who wasn't allowed anywhere but the basement. Although I don't recall his actually saying it, it was just a known fact: dad hates cats.</span></div><div style="color: #454545; font-family: '.SF UI Text'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;"><span style="font-family: &quot;.sfuitext&quot;; font-size: 17pt;"></span><br /></div><div style="color: #454545; font-family: '.SF UI Text'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;.sfuitext&quot;; font-size: 17pt;">"I thought I knew you," I said inside my head. "Who are you and what have you done with my father?"</span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;.sfuitext&quot;; font-size: 17pt;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: &quot;.sfuitext&quot;; font-size: 17pt;"><br /></span></div><div style="color: #454545; font-family: '.SF UI Text'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;"><span style="font-family: &quot;.sfuitext&quot;; font-size: 17pt;"></span><br /></div><div style="color: #454545; font-family: '.SF UI Text'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;.sfuitext&quot;; font-size: 17pt;">I got out of the car to help dad walk down the steps from his front porch. The cat ran to me and let me pet it. A friendly cat! I may or may not have squealed in delight.</span></div><div style="color: #454545; font-family: '.SF UI Text'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;"><span style="font-family: &quot;.sfuitext&quot;; font-size: 17pt;"></span><br /></div><div style="color: #454545; font-family: '.SF UI Text'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;.sfuitext&quot;; font-size: 17pt;">Me: "You have a cat?! How on earth did that happen?"</span></div><div style="color: #454545; font-family: '.SF UI Text'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;"><span style="font-family: &quot;.sfuitext&quot;; font-size: 17pt;"></span><br /></div><div style="color: #454545; font-family: '.SF UI Text'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;.sfuitext&quot;; font-size: 17pt;">Dad: "Well, it's Joyce's cat really."</span></div><div style="color: #454545; font-family: '.SF UI Text'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;"><span style="font-family: &quot;.sfuitext&quot;; font-size: 17pt;"></span><br /></div><div style="color: #454545; font-family: '.SF UI Text'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;.sfuitext&quot;; font-size: 17pt;">Joyce is my dad's housemate. She gets her way a lot more than I recall my own mother getting hers back before they finally divorced after 22&nbsp; years unhappily married.</span></div><div style="color: #454545; font-family: '.SF UI Text'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;"><span style="font-family: &quot;.sfuitext&quot;; font-size: 17pt;"></span><br /></div><div style="color: #454545; font-family: '.SF UI Text'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;.sfuitext&quot;; font-size: 17pt;">Me: "Well, it's rubbing its head on your legs, so I think it thinks it's your cat, Dad."</span></div><div style="color: #454545; font-family: '.SF UI Text'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;"><span style="font-family: &quot;.sfuitext&quot;; font-size: 17pt;"></span><br /></div><div style="color: #454545; font-family: '.SF UI Text'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;.sfuitext&quot;; font-size: 17pt;">Dad: "Yeah, it likes to get hair on my pant legs. It stays outdoors, but we feed it and all."</span></div><div style="color: #454545; font-family: '.SF UI Text'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;"><span style="font-family: &quot;.sfuitext&quot;; font-size: 17pt;"></span><br /></div><div style="color: #454545; font-family: '.SF UI Text'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;.sfuitext&quot;; font-size: 17pt;">Me: "But how? I thought you don't like pets."</span></div><div style="color: #454545; font-family: '.SF UI Text'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;"><span style="font-family: &quot;.sfuitext&quot;; font-size: 17pt;"></span><br /></div><div style="color: #454545; font-family: '.SF UI Text'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;.sfuitext&quot;; font-size: 17pt;">Dad: "Well, it just showed up one day after the neighbors moved out. It kinda goes between our house and the other neighbor's house."</span></div><div style="color: #454545; font-family: '.SF UI Text'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;"><span style="font-family: &quot;.sfuitext&quot;; font-size: 17pt;"></span><br /></div><div style="color: #454545; font-family: '.SF UI Text'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;.sfuitext&quot;; font-size: 17pt;">Dad shrugged.&nbsp;</span></div><div style="color: #454545; font-family: '.SF UI Text'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;"><span style="font-family: &quot;.sfuitext&quot;; font-size: 17pt;"></span><br /></div><br /><div style="color: #454545; font-family: '.SF UI Text'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;.sfuitext&quot;; font-size: 17pt;">Like he's just some kind of shrugger, now. The grumpy, temper-tantrum throwing guy I grew up with has mellowed in his old age. I like this guy, after all these years. My dad, the cat guy.</span></div>http://thisambiguouslife.blogspot.com/2017/08/my-dad-cat-guy.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Becky Carleton)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1498105551688934461.post-5161246782743228420Sun, 16 Jul 2017 14:15:00 +00002017-07-16T14:57:14.990-05:00alcoholismchildren's librariandeathPatPat's wakesingingPublic Singing<div style="color: #454545; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 17pt;">Happy would-be birthday to my brother, Patrick Kerner, who's sittin' on a rainbow in the afterlife with his Sharon.</span></div><div style="color: #454545; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: &quot;.sfuitext&quot;; font-size: 17pt;"></span><br /></span></div><div style="color: #454545; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 17pt;">Six years ago my husband and I sang Pat and Sharon's song, "In Spite of Ourselves" at Pat's wake. It was the first time I sang in public since my sister Jenny's wedding when I was 13. I had stopped singing in public because I was ashamed of my voice. I'd never be as good as Chrissie Hynde or Belinda Carlisle or Cyndi Lauper. Why bother?</span></div><div style="color: #454545; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: &quot;.sfuitext&quot;; font-size: 17pt;"></span><br /></span></div><div style="color: #454545; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 17pt;">Fast forward 27 years. I'm a children's librarian. I get paid to sing with kids and their caregivers. I teach moms and dads and grandmas and grandpas to sing with their little ones. "Singing is an important early literacy skill," I tell my storytimers. "Singing teaches us to break up words into smaller syllables, which is necessary when you read," I say. "And, it's fun. Don't worry if you think you can't sing. Kids don't mind. They're just happy you're tryin'."</span></div><div style="color: #454545; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: &quot;.sfuitext&quot;; font-size: 17pt;"></span><br /></span></div><div style="color: #454545; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 17pt;">I sing for a living. I sing for life. I sing for those I'll someday leave behind. I'll still never be as good as Chrissie Hynde or Belinda Carlisle or Cyndi Lauper. I'll never be as good as k.d. lang, Adele, or Beyoncé. Or Sinead O'Connor, Billie Holliday, or Aretha Franklin. Why bother?</span></div><div style="color: #454545; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: &quot;.sfuitext&quot;; font-size: 17pt;"></span><br /></span></div><div style="color: #454545; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 17pt;">It bothered me when my brother died at such a young age: 49. So much life left to live, sputtered out. Pat was musically blessed, a gifted singer and guitar player. He could have changed the world with his song. Instead, he drank himself to death, following the alcohol-related death of his beloved Sharon. Two drunks, dead too soon.&nbsp;</span></div><div style="color: #454545; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: &quot;.sfuitext&quot;; font-size: 17pt;"></span><br /></span></div><div style="color: #454545; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 17pt;">But they were so much more than that, as all people are when you dig deeper. Pat could not see how living without Sharon would be worth his time, so he gave up.&nbsp;</span></div><div style="color: #454545; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: &quot;.sfuitext&quot;; font-size: 17pt;"></span><br /></span></div><div style="color: #454545; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 17pt;">Our brother Jay was with Pat on his deathbed.&nbsp;</span></div><div style="color: #454545; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: &quot;.sfuitext&quot;; font-size: 17pt;"></span><br /></span></div><div style="color: #454545; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 17pt;">Jay: "Go be with Sharon."</span></div><div style="color: #454545; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 17pt;">Pat: "I'm tryin'."</span></div><div style="color: #454545; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: &quot;.sfuitext&quot;; font-size: 17pt;"></span><br /></span></div><div style="color: #454545; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 17pt;">I like to picture Pat sittin' on a rainbow with his Sharon. We know what happens to our bodies when we die. Our vessels are ultimately nothing more than detritivore feed. No one knows for sure what happens to our souls. My best guess is this: they reside inside the living, our loved ones left behind. The detritivores can't feed on what our hearts devour.</span></div><div style="color: #454545; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: &quot;.sfuitext&quot;; font-size: 17pt;"></span><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal;"><div style="color: #454545;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 17pt;">I don't know much about riches or fame or singing in tune. But I've learned a few things about living life to the fullest, both by observing my brother's bodily demise and by my own failures and struggles. I've learned that I'm happiest when I do my best, when I get out of bed with a plan to make this world a better place for the hearts devoured. I've learned that it's best to tell the truth even though it's often the hardest option. I've learned that devoured hearts hold no grudges, only love, and love's brother, forgiveness.</span></div><div style="color: #454545;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 17pt;"><br /></span></div><span style="color: #454545; font-family: inherit; font-size: 22.6667px;">Today would have been my brother Pat's 56th birthday had he not passed six years ago. Raise a glass in his honor, if that's your thing, and no matter what, sing your hearts out.</span></div><div style="color: #454545; font-family: '.SF UI Text'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;"><span style="font-family: &quot;.sfuitext&quot;; font-size: 17pt;"></span><br /></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/zxXfotixY1Y/0.jpg" frameborder="0" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/zxXfotixY1Y?feature=player_embedded" width="320"></iframe></div><div style="color: #454545; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 17pt;"><a href="https://youtu.be/zxXfotixY1Y">https://youtu.be/zxXfotixY1Y</a></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 17pt;"><br /></span></div><div style="color: #454545; line-height: normal;"><br /></div>http://thisambiguouslife.blogspot.com/2017/07/public-singing.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Becky Carleton)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1498105551688934461.post-7680211570821014102Fri, 12 May 2017 03:34:00 +00002017-05-12T06:48:42.665-05:00Mixed Up Words<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Mom: "I need $3000 to pay for my assassination."</span></div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; min-height: 13.8px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"></span></div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; min-height: 13.8px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"></span><br /></div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Me: "Your assassination?"</span></div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; min-height: 13.8px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"></span><br /></div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Mom: "I mean my funeral! When are the paleontologists going to arrive?"</span></div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; min-height: 13.8px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"></span><br /></div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Me: "The paleontologists? You mean the palliative care specialists."</span></div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; min-height: 13.8px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"></span><br /></div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Mom: "Yeah."</span></div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; min-height: 13.8px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"></span><br /></div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Later...</span></div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; min-height: 13.8px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"></span><br /></div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; min-height: 13.8px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"></span><br /></div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; min-height: 13.8px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"></span><br /></div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Me: "My mom wants a curbside service."</span></div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; min-height: 13.8px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"></span><br /></div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Will: "A curbside service? Like a drive thru? Like, go pick up a cherry limeade and whisper into the microphone, 'give us all the cherry limeades you have!'"</span></div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; min-height: 13.8px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"></span><br /></div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Me: "Graveside service. I mean."</span></div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; min-height: 13.8px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"></span><br /></div><br /><div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">I'm turning into Mom.</span></div>http://thisambiguouslife.blogspot.com/2017/05/mixed-up-words.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Becky Carleton)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1498105551688934461.post-810511452397695826Sun, 02 Apr 2017 16:12:00 +00002017-04-02T11:12:05.208-05:00artartistsfeminismfeministspeacepeace heroespoetrypoetswritingRevolutionary Dreams by Nikki Giovanni<div style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-qh7U8F9Ul1M/WOEiM51CJHI/AAAAAAAAHhk/yps2xv34zkYfdhG-QuyZha5iblk6CvgPgCK4B/s1600/nikki%2Bgiovanni.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-qh7U8F9Ul1M/WOEiM51CJHI/AAAAAAAAHhk/yps2xv34zkYfdhG-QuyZha5iblk6CvgPgCK4B/s320/nikki%2Bgiovanni.jpg" width="319" /></a><br />image <a href="https://c2.staticflickr.com/6/5005/5348915155_2cca609662_b.jpg">source</a><br /><br /><b><span style="font-family: inherit;">I used to dream militant dreams</span></b></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: inherit;">of taking over america to show</span></b></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: inherit;">these white folks</span></b></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: inherit;">how it should be done</span></b></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></b></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: inherit;">I used to dream radical dreams</span></b></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: inherit;">of blowing everyone away</span></b></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: inherit;">with my perceptive powers</span></b></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: inherit;">of correct analysis</span></b></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></b></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: inherit;">I even used to think I’d be the one</span></b></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: inherit;">to stop the riot and</span></b></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: inherit;">negotiate the peace</span></b></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></b></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: inherit;">then I awoke and dug</span></b></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: inherit;">that if I dreamed natural</span></b></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: inherit;">dreams of being a natural</span></b></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: inherit;">woman doing what a woman</span></b></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></b></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: inherit;">does when she’s natural</span></b></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></b></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: inherit;">I would have a revolution.</span></b></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></b></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: inherit;">--Nikki Giovanni</span></b></div>http://thisambiguouslife.blogspot.com/2017/04/revolutionary-dreams-by-nikki-giovanni.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Becky Carleton)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1498105551688934461.post-7282416378826808123Wed, 15 Feb 2017 15:35:00 +00002017-02-15T16:45:25.462-06:00family dysfunctionmajor depressive disordermedicationmental healthparentingPTSDsexual abusetherapyCVSIt's no secret I'm no fan of secrets. I blog about things you're not supposed to talk about in polite society. Fuck polite society. I was brought up to be a good girl. Good girls are always polite, never rude, never never never burdening other people with their sadness and anxiety. Chin up. Don't cry. Don't make a fuss. Put on a pretty face and cheer up, girl!<br /><br />When I was a teenager, back in the 80s, during the height of mall bangs and matchy-matchy clothes and Lee Press-on Nails, when I'd be in bed crying, or just staring at the wall, unable to find the inner energy to go to school or to hang out with friends, my mom would knock on my bedroom door and say, "Hey, Beck! Let's go to Osco and buy you a new tube of lipstick."<br /><br />That was Mom's solution to everything when I was a teenager. Feeling down? Let's go buy you a new tube of lipstick. That will brighten you up!<br /><br />Sometimes she'd say, "Hey, Beck! Let's go to Skaggs," and because I was an asshole teenager who often talked to her parents as if they were complete idiots, I'd yell back, "Mom, it's Oscooooooooo."<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Vb9OP2MjS2c/WKR_awKIlQI/AAAAAAAAHgY/1V9aG7e6VZgwWq14AdQId9SaXMBPvi9fwCK4B/s1600/263579_10150205055760876_7729065_n.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Vb9OP2MjS2c/WKR_awKIlQI/AAAAAAAAHgY/1V9aG7e6VZgwWq14AdQId9SaXMBPvi9fwCK4B/s400/263579_10150205055760876_7729065_n.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Mom, Dad, and me, circa 1985</span></div><br />The drugstore just down the street from where we lived in Overland Park, Kansas, a snooty suburb of Kansas City, Missouri, had once been a Skaggs, but it had recently been bought out by another company and renamed Osco. <a href="http://www.435mag.com/August-2014/The-Enduring-Legacy-of-Katz-Drug-Stores/">Before it was Skaggs, it had been called Katz</a>, and sometimes Mom would really slip up and call it Katz and I'd be quick to scold her in my most assholish teenage voice, "Mom! It hasn't been called Katz since YOU were a teenager."<br /><br />Mom had been a teenager in the 1950s, during the height of pointy bras, curly hairdos, high-heeled shoes, and TONS of makeup. Her own mother was a licensed beautician and would later own a beauty salon. Mom started wearing makeup when she was 13, one year after she'd stopped believing in Santa and one year before she'd started dating Jim Kerner, the guy she'd marry when she was 18.<br /><br />She passed up a scholarship to go to MU. Mom secretly wanted to be an architect, but she knew only ugly girls went to college. Instead, her parents sent her to beauty school and she got her beautician's license "just in case" she'd ever need a job. She worked during summer break in high school, cutting and perming and coloring people's hair, but after she graduated from high school in May 1956 she spent much of her time planning for her wedding, which was held in November of that year. Good thing she dropped all of her college-prep classes during her senior year of high school and instead took sewing and cooking and other classes that would prepare her for the life she thought she was meant for, as the wife of Jim Kerner and the mother of their four children--Jay, Kit, Pat, and Jenny.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-939a0LwKgAo/WKR5K7Ghy8I/AAAAAAAAHfk/Gm6s4afpw3kFsSgNlDBM1gmAGkaPbK_VwCK4B/s1600/10274129_10202992369023550_2267353076430323276_n.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-939a0LwKgAo/WKR5K7Ghy8I/AAAAAAAAHfk/Gm6s4afpw3kFsSgNlDBM1gmAGkaPbK_VwCK4B/s400/10274129_10202992369023550_2267353076430323276_n.jpg" width="392" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Mrs. Jim Kerner and three of their four kids--Pat, Kit, and Jenny, circa 1965</span></div><br />Mom was only Mrs. Jim Kerner for ten years, from 1956 to 1966, from age 18 to 28. While they were married Jim had, on two separate occasions, had her unwillingly taken to the hospital where she was diagnosed with a "nervous breakdown" and where she received electroshock therapy. In 1966, before she could be accused of suffering a third nervous breakdown, Mom finally got the nerve to divorce Jim, who had been physically abusive with their kids and was cheating on her with his secretary, who he later married, and then divorced when he married wife number three. He's on wife number four now.<br /><br />Mom would be on husband number three now if Bob hadn't passed away a few years ago. Thankfully, third time's a charm. After her miserable marriage to my rage-filled dad from 1969 to 1992, Mom was single for ten years before she decided she'd like to find a companion and joined Match.com, where she met Bob, who'd recently been widowed. They dated for six weeks or so before they eloped and Mom moved to Nebraska. We, her adult kids, thought she was nuts.<br /><br />"You barely know him!" We complained.<br /><br />But it turns out Bob was a nice guy. A little controlling, as all Mom's men were, but not abusive. He liked blondes so Mom dyed her salt and pepper 'do blonde, which turned a brassy reddish color that I didn't care much for, but hey, I'm not the boss of Mom's hair and she was, after all, finally happy.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-vQiAaavqnQ0/WKR-quIbrwI/AAAAAAAAHgM/OSphRTYgOl0dNGREeWnURxjIyJlQqLtPQCK4B/s1600/205851_10150252875140876_7378405_n.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="387" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-vQiAaavqnQ0/WKR-quIbrwI/AAAAAAAAHgM/OSphRTYgOl0dNGREeWnURxjIyJlQqLtPQCK4B/s400/205851_10150252875140876_7378405_n.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Bob, Mom, and my daughter Katie, circa 2012</span></div><br />I try not to make too many comments about Mom's hair and makeup because I don't want her to reciprocate. I stopped wearing makeup on a regular basis fifteen years ago when my boyfriend Will, who is now my husband Will, complained that he didn't like the taste of lipstick and he thought I was pretty without "all that crap" on my face. I'd stopped dying my hair and perming it when I was in my mid-twenties when I got a wild hair up my ass and decided to let it grow out naturally and, turns out, I actually liked it. I'd had "dirty blonde" hair as a kid, and when I was an anorexic eleven-year old Mom sent me to stay with her mom, who thought I was just starved for attention and dyed my hair blonde. From age eleven til my mid-twenties I'd dyed my hair blonde, brown, brown with blue bangs, black, red, and brown again until I finally let it grow out naturally and decided I actually liked it.<br /><br />Mom thought I was nuts. Mom, like her own mother before her, does not abide natural hair. If God wanted us to have natural hair he wouldn't have invented hair color and perms. Mom once told me when I was a teenager that the reason it's important for women to wear makeup is because, just like peacocks and peahens, men are just naturally more vibrant looking and so women need to add color to their hair and to their faces to keep up.<br /><br />So, yeah. I try not to give Mom beauty advice because I don't want it back. But once she came out and asked me if I liked her "blonde" hair and I said, "Honestly, Mom, I prefer your natural color."<br /><br />"But it makes me look like an old lady!" she said.<br /><br />"So what? You are an old lady. A beautiful old lady. There's no shame in getting old, Mom. The alternative is death."<br /><br />She dropped the subject. I noticed, though, after Bob passed away, Mom let her natural hair grow out. I think it looks beautiful.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-xEK0Zkbyxwg/WKSEKQwlfrI/AAAAAAAAHgs/P9MHOYAWTfc8w2UsVqVv6MwHZkNoLNEVwCK4B/s1600/13220815_10153386748870876_5707548099497323592_n.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="290" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-xEK0Zkbyxwg/WKSEKQwlfrI/AAAAAAAAHgs/P9MHOYAWTfc8w2UsVqVv6MwHZkNoLNEVwCK4B/s400/13220815_10153386748870876_5707548099497323592_n.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Mom and Katie, 2015</span></div><br />Mom still insists on wearing makeup, though. The first time I ever saw Mom leave the house without makeup on her face was a couple of months ago when I drove her to the ER late at night. She'll be 79 in May of this year. She has COPD and has a nasal cannula that transports oxygen from a tank to her lungs. If she takes it off for just a few minutes, she quickly runs out of breath as if she'd just run around the block a few times. Our family got together in December for Christmas. We all smushed in together for a big family photo, Mom and all her surviving kids--Jay, Kit, Jenny, and me--as well as our spouses and some of our own kids. I was to Mom's left, sitting so close I could hear her labored breathing. I looked at her and saw that she'd taken out her nasal cannula and hidden it behind her back. She was sitting awkwardly. I glanced behind her and said, "Mom, are you sitting on your oxygen tank?"<br /><br />"Shh! He's...ready...to...take...the...picture," Mom said.<br /><br />"But doesn't that hurt? It can't be too comfortable--"<br /><br />She cut me off. "I'm fine! Let's...take...the...picture...now."<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-r6vbLhsKuIk/WKRyeKJ8eXI/AAAAAAAAHfU/8LbB6iXrHhQZcU6EZzrkUaPUAYdxqEOUgCK4B/s1600/mom%2Band%2Bher%2Bprogeny.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="285" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-r6vbLhsKuIk/WKRyeKJ8eXI/AAAAAAAAHfU/8LbB6iXrHhQZcU6EZzrkUaPUAYdxqEOUgCK4B/s400/mom%2Band%2Bher%2Bprogeny.jpg" width="400" /></a>&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Mom and Her Progeny, Christmas 2017</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Mom likes to keep up appearances, as many women from her era do. And although I'm certain I drive her nuts, the coolest thing about my mom is that she really does love me just the way I am. And, although when I was a kid I wasn't encouraged to talk about ugly subjects, Mom's chilled out over the years. As far as my writing goes, Mom's always been my number one fan. She'd prefer that I write best-selling romances and tone down all the political junk, but for the most part, Mom encourages me to share my story--all of it--the good, the bad, the ugly. She doesn't even mind if I share her story, since it's so intertwined with mine.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">The year I turned 40, my brother Pat died of liver failure at the age of 49. I was struggling. I'd had a lot of mental health issues when I was a kid, a teen, and a young adult, but in my late twenties my doctor prescribed me sertraline and it was like a miracle. It lifted the depressive fog I'd known for what seemed like my whole life. I could read Harriet Lerner's amazing self-help books and go to therapy and talk about my problems and actually feel helped. But when Pat died, I began to spiral out of control again. It didn't matter that I had met Will, the love of my life, and that we had an amazing daughter, Katie, and I had a great job at the library and our lives were so freaking happy. Not even the sertraline helped.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">The therapist I was seeing at the time encouraged me to share a secret that I didn't think I'd have the courage to share. I'd had the guts to share it with my mom back when I was little, and I'd told my closest friends and lovers, but I'd never shared it with my siblings, and I certainly didn't feel like I could talk about it openly in public.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">But when Pat died at such a young age, I realized that I could die young, too. And even if I didn't die young, I would definitely die sometime, and I couldn't see how I could ever heal entirely while holding on to such a horrible secret. I had to let it go.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">One by one I told my siblings. I told some family friends. They, of course, were heartbroken, but none of us died. And, I began to feel better.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">I'd always wanted to be a writer, but I had trouble finishing anything I started. Nothing I wrote was ever good enough because what I really wanted to write about was a big ugly secret I thought was too horrible to share. But the more I share it, the better I felt.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">And so, I began this blog.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">I was worried what my mom would think about me sharing such ugly family secrets, so I asked her permission. What she said was beautiful.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">"You have my permission to write anything. About yourself. About me. Write what you need to write," Mom said.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">It was hard. And so, so amazing. Freeing. Healing. Just what I needed.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">When I was young, very young, too young to know any better, and when Pat was young, too, but old enough to know better, he sexually abused me numerous times. By the time he was fourteen and I was five, he invited his friend who was even more sexually mature that Pat was, and what they did to me scarred me for life. But it didn't kill me, and over the years I've learned to to live with it. The worst thing of all is that I was told not to talk about it.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">"Don't tell Mom or she'll have to go back to the hospital," Pat said.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Mom had never been sent to the hospital for electroshock therapy while I was alive, but I knew that she had been before I was born. I later learned that our grandmother, after she would abuse Pat, would tell him the same thing. "Don't tell your mother or she'll get so upset she'll have to go back to the hospital."</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">In the last few months that Pat was alive, but he knew he was dying, Pat shared with me that his earliest childhood memory was him clutching Mom by the leg as Jim pulled her away on one of the two occasions she was sent to the hospital. I asked Pat if he'd ever discussed it with Mom, and he said no, he didn't want to upset her. And then he took a swig of Peppermint Schnapps.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">I've learned to share my story, to write openly about my mental health struggles, and, miraculously, it's become this beautiful thing. I've had so many people write to me and talk to me in person, telling me how much my words have helped them heal. So many people have suffered with mental health issues and family dysfunction and family secrets, and sharing my story has helped them know that they are free to share theirs.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">One person I know is too young to share her story publicly, and so I've been hesitant to write openly about it myself, but it's intertwined with my own story so much that not sharing her story feels like I'm keeping secrets of my own.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">It's no secret I'm no fan of secrets. I blog about things you're not supposed to talk about in polite society. Fuck polite society. I was brought up to be a good, secret-keeping girl, but I have learned to be an open book. But it's different when the story is not yours alone to share. It's different when the story belongs to a kid, too young to fully understand what it means to share your ugly stories.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">This kid is my kid. She has an ugly story I want to share. But I'm torn. Do I want to share it to make her feel better, or to make myself feel better?&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">I keep running into people who, after I share with them my kid's ugly story, they share their kids' ugly stories with me and, in doing so, make me feel so much better as a parent. See! These people are awesome parents and yet they have kids who struggle, too! It's not all our fault. In fact, maybe we all struggle, and the more we hide our struggles the worse the struggle is.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Then I worry that maybe I've been avoiding writing about my daughter's ugly struggles because I like to keep up appearances. I'm a great mom, everybody. Look how awesome my kid is. Obviously due to such good parenting. So when my kid struggles, what's it say about me?</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">"I honestly thought if we didn't abuse her she'd turn out OK," I said to my husband when the doctor told us the news.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">We both laughed, but it's true. I attribute much of my mental health issues to my shitty childhood. It's my parent's fault. It's my brother's fault. It's society's fault. If I had been allowed to share my ugly struggles as a child instead of waiting til I was a middle-aged woman, I'd have been better off.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">But now I see it's not so easy. It's complicated, this ambiguous life.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">"Your daughter has Major Depressive Disorder."&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">When the doctor said it, I felt both saddened and relieved. Katie's been struggling with anger management and signs of anxiety and depression since first grade. I've never shared the details of my own ugly struggles with her, not wanting to burden her with my problems, but she knows I had a shitty childhood and that I take medicine and read self-help books and have something called Posttraumatic Stress Disorder. She's too young to know the details, but she knows her Mom has ugly struggles, and so did her Uncle Pat, and so did her Grandma Bev, and so did her Great-grandmother and on and on and on.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">I honestly thought if we didn't abuse her she'd turn out OK.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">And guess what? She will.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">We were hesitant to give Katie psychotropic meds because of her still-developing brain. The black-box warnings on my own prescription sertraline state clearly that it can lead to suicidal thoughts in people under that age of 25. I mentioned this to Katie's doctor, and she assured me that the FDA requires them to put that on the medicine, but if you dig down deeper into most of the cases where a young person has committed suicide while taking this medicine you can see that it's their family history and their own unique brain chemistry that lead to the suicide and not just the medicine per se.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">"I guess it's just like how she's got your allergies and takes Children's Zyrtec, just like you take Adult Zyrtec. It's kinda the same thing," my husband said. "I've seen you off your meds, and let's just say, you do a lot better when you're on them."</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Still, it's a concern. We don't want to medicate our ten-year old with powerful medicine that can alter her brain structure if we don't need to.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">But it's gotten to the point where we feel we need to. Several doctors and social workers and therapists, both from school and in private practice, have recommended we go this route. We've tried other options. We first took her to a child psychologist when she was in second grade. She's been seeing the school social worker on a weekly basis since third grade. She was tested for and accepted into the gifted program at school, which we hoped would help her find her tribe where she could relax. We've tried taking her to church, enrolling her in basketball and Girl Scouts, inviting kids over for playdates. We'd see some improvement, but none of it was a panacea for the social isolation she felt, her anxious over-thinking, or her anger that seemed to come out of nowhere. She reminds me so much of myself when I was her age. Now I understand that maybe it wasn't all my parents fault, and just how awful it feels to watch your pride and joy suffer with their own ugly struggles.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">"You have my permission to write anything about me, " Katie said.<br /><br />"You're only ten. You're not really old enough to know what you're giving me permission to do. When you get older, you might be embarrassed about what I write about you now," I said.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">I had mentioned that I wanted to write about our decision to medicate Katie, that the more people I meet who share with me stories of their own kids who are struggling with the same mental health issues, the more I realize how common it is, and how none of us should feel ashamed about it.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">"You can write about me, Mom. Maybe it will help other people, and that makes me feel good."</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">The other day, Katie stumbled and dropped a clay pot she'd labored over in art class. We didn't hear about it until Katie got home from school and told us herself. No phone calls from the school nurse or the social worker, telling us our child was with them in tears. No emails from her teacher warning us of the major meltdown our child had and what they did to work it out.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">"What did you do when you dropped your pot," my husband asked Katie.<br /><br />"I picked it up. My art teacher said we can glue it back together," Katie said, smiling.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">"I think the medicine is helping," my husband said.<br /><br />"And Jack. Jack is helping, too," Katie said.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Jack is Katie's therapist who she sees every-other week. She likes him a lot. His daughter is in high school now, but when she was Katie's age she was also in the gifted program at the same school where Katie goes, and she struggled with many of the same issues Katie does.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">"You know what Jack told me?" Katie said. "He said that his daughter used to feel like her peers didn't understand her and that she didn't fit in and she felt all alone and empty, just like I do sometimes, but he said that just the other day she came home from a party, a high school party, and there were drugs and alcohol there and she said, 'no thanks' and went home and he's so proud of her for not giving into peer pressure. And he thinks I'm the same way. I might struggle now, but I'm learning to be my own person, and that's a good thing."</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">I remember being a teenager, lying in bed crying, or just staring at the wall, unable to find the inner energy to go to school or to hang out with friends, and my mom would knock on my bedroom door and say, "Hey, Beck! Let's go to Osco and buy you a new tube of lipstick." When I wasn't trapped in my bedroom, I was off with my friends, my tribe, the misfit kids at school with their own ugly struggles. I looked much older than I was, so I was able to buy alcohol when I was seventeen, so I'd buy Boone's Farm for my tribe and me to share.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">It got us by. We survived. I still drink, but not nearly as much as I did when I was in high school and as a young adult. I was lucky enough to have a doctor prescribe me sertraline. I didn't die of liver failure like Pat did at age 49. I self-medicated until I found something that works better for me. It makes me wonder how it might have been if, instead of self-medicating on Boone's Farm, whenever Mom would take me to Osco we'd have picked up some prescription sertraline instead of all those tubes of lipstick.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ljZPK9KPCBw/WKSlb_Gy8rI/AAAAAAAAHhA/0n4OPBrCOb8t3P7OTl3W2I7Pk_4F1tjtwCK4B/s1600/16387972_10154015992110876_8970906519787384220_n.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ljZPK9KPCBw/WKSlb_Gy8rI/AAAAAAAAHhA/0n4OPBrCOb8t3P7OTl3W2I7Pk_4F1tjtwCK4B/s400/16387972_10154015992110876_8970906519787384220_n.jpg" width="300" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Katie, age 10</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">"Mom, did you know that Adrianna wears lipstick?" Katie said the other day as we entered CVS and passed through the lipstick aisle on our way to the pharmacy.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">"Is she in your class?" I asked.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">"Yeah, she's only in fifth grade, like me, and she already wears lipstick!"</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">"Well, some people are into that sort of stuff, but you don't have to be if you don't want to be," I said.<br /><br />"I'm never going to wear lipstick. In fact, the other day Adrianna asked me what color lipstick I wear and when I said I don't wear lipstick she said she didn't believe me! I had to wipe my mouth with the back of my hand to prove it to her," Katie said.<br /><br />"Well, you do have your daddy's gorgeous red lips," I said.<br /><br />"And my mom's allergies and depression," Katie said.<br /><br />"Oh, that reminds me," I said. "You're nearly out of Children's Zyrtec. We'd better pick some up while we're here."</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">I kissed the top of my daughter's head, which is getting harder to do each day. She's nearly as tall as I am. Someday I expect her to pass me up.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div>http://thisambiguouslife.blogspot.com/2017/02/osco.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Becky Carleton)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1498105551688934461.post-6805944439526521749Sat, 11 Feb 2017 15:35:00 +00002017-02-11T21:14:27.384-06:00current eventsnewspublic educationpublic schoolraceOur Daughter's Class Picture Our Daughter's Class Picture<br /><br />22 fifth graders<br />8 white kids<br />5 black kids<br />1 biracial kid - black and white<br />1 Asian kid<br />7 Latino kids<br />22 Kansans<br />22 Americans<br />22 kids in public schoolhttp://thisambiguouslife.blogspot.com/2017/02/our-daughters-class-picture.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Becky Carleton)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1498105551688934461.post-3207738970165365958Wed, 08 Feb 2017 16:43:00 +00002017-02-08T10:47:12.506-06:00current eventsgiftedKatiemental healthnewspoliticspublic educationpublic schoolProud public school familyOur ten year old sees a therapist named Jack who teaches her mental health survival skills. At school she has issues with anger management and depression, common in gifted kids, so we signed her up to talk it out with Jack. He's a nice guy. Katie was looking forward to seeing him today.<br /><br />The phone rang and I knew it was Katie. I had called the school nurse earlier this morning and left a voicemail message telling&nbsp;her that Jack had called in sick and we'd have to reschedule Katie's therapy appointment for another day. I mentioned that she could tell Katie to call me if she had any questions.<br /><br />As she was leaving for school this morning I told Katie that we'd pick her up at 9:30 for her appointment with Jack. At that point we didn't know he was sick and would have to cancel. At 9:55 I got the call.<br /><br />"Hey, Punk. How are you?" I said.<br /><br />"Sad. I wanted to see Jack," she said.<br /><br />"Yeah, I figured you'd be sad. I know you were looking forward to talking to him."<br /><br />"Yep."<br /><br />"Yeah. People get sick. That's life. We'll reschedule with him on another day soon."<br /><br />"What day?"<br /><br />"I don't know yet, but we've been put on a list of people for Jack to call if someone else cancels their appointment, and then we could go see him. He's busy with a lot of clients."<br /><br />"Yeah. OK," Katie said.<br /><br />"So what are you doing now?" I asked. Focus on the moment.<br /><br />"I'm in the nurses office."<br /><br />"Are you feeling sick?"<br /><br />"No, not really. But they said I could call you from the nurse's phone."<br /><br />"Were you upset when you found out your appointment with Jack got cancelled?"&nbsp;I asked.<br /><br />"Yeah. But then I got to go down to the kindergartener's room again and help them with their reading and writing!" Katie's voice went from sullen to super excited during the course of that sentence. The ultimate metaphor for the tween years.<br /><br />"Oh yeah? They let you be the reading helper again today?"<br /><br />"Yes! I helped these adorable kindergartners with their reading AND their writing. They are so cute, Mom!"<br /><br />"I know. It feels good to help little kids, doesn't it?"<br /><br />"Yep. Well, I gotta go back up to my class and do some math now. Bye. I love you."<br /><br />And then she hung up.<br /><br />My daughter is a fifth grader at our neighborhood public school. She's precocious and moody. She's in special ed because of her agility in "creative" and "innovative" thinking. The school district pays extra for her special services. Her father and I didn't even have to pay for textbooks this year. If we didn't have the strong support of her public school principals, nurse, social worker, innovation specialists, and teachers, my husband and I would struggle to meet her educational, emotional, and social needs. <br /><br />We are a proud public school family. Please don't let our new Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos, destroy the foundation of our society's best institution. Public schools work when they are adequately funded and supported by the community.&nbsp;Well educated citizens make great neighbors. Good schools increase property values. Our kids&nbsp;are brilliant--each and every one of them--if only we give them the support to shine their brightest.<br /><br /><br />http://thisambiguouslife.blogspot.com/2017/02/our-ten-year-old-sees-therapist-named.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Becky Carleton)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1498105551688934461.post-629386538070394998Wed, 08 Feb 2017 15:24:00 +00002017-02-08T09:36:02.834-06:00current eventsnewspoliticsracismsexism#LetLizSpeak<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-C8paxXUwgg0/WJs3EQlzxPI/AAAAAAAAHew/Y5Y-ZnRKZJsuJ0taUCe_z0JcRANP4kBxACLcB/s1600/_WordsSetUsFree.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-C8paxXUwgg0/WJs3EQlzxPI/AAAAAAAAHew/Y5Y-ZnRKZJsuJ0taUCe_z0JcRANP4kBxACLcB/s640/_WordsSetUsFree.png" width="426" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div align="left" class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">Here's the full transcript:</div><div align="left" class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div>Dear Senator Thurmond:<br /><div align="left" class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><!-- cxenseparse_end --><!-- cxenseparse_start --><br /></div>I write to express my sincere opposition to the confirmation of Jefferson B. Sessions as a federal district court judge for the Southern District of Alabama. My professional and personal roots in Alabama are deep and lasting. Anyone who has used the power of his office as United States Attorney to intimidate and chill the free exercise of the ballot by citizens should not be elevated to our courts. Mr. Sessions has used the awesome powers of his office in a shabby attempt to intimidate and frighten elderly black voters. For this reprehensible conduct, he should not be rewarded with a federal judgeship.<br /><br />I regret that a long-standing commitment prevents me from appearing in person to testify against this nominee. However, I have attached a copy of my statement opposing Mr. Sessions’ confirmation and I request that my statement as well as this be made a part of the hearing record.<br /><div align="left" class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><!-- cxenseparse_end --><!-- cxenseparse_start --><br /></div>I do sincerely urge you to oppose the confirmation of Mr. Sessions.<br /><div align="left" class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><!-- cxenseparse_end --><!-- cxenseparse_start --><br /></div>Sincerely,<br /><div align="left" class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><!-- cxenseparse_end --><!-- cxenseparse_start --><br /></div>Coretta Scott King<br /><br />http://thisambiguouslife.blogspot.com/2017/02/letlizspeak.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Becky Carleton)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1498105551688934461.post-6687617423773489433Sat, 04 Feb 2017 17:13:00 +00002017-02-04T11:13:46.287-06:00current eventspoliticspublic educationpublic schoolAn open letter to Kansas Senator Jerry Moran re: Betsy DeVos' nomination for secretary of education<a href="https://www.moran.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/e-mail-jerry">Senator Moran</a>:<br /><br />Please vote no for President Trump's nominee for secretary of education, Betsy DeVos. We need a Secretary of Education who has experience in public education. My friend went to law school with you at KU, a great public university. I am a proud graduate of Johnson County Community College. My husband is a proud graduate of Shawnee Mission West High School. Our daughter is in the gifted program in the Shawnee Mission school district. We love our public schools. That is why I oppose President Trump’s nominee for secretary of education, Betsy DeVos. Please vote no.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: left;">Sincerely,</div><div style="text-align: left;">Becky Carleton</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div>http://thisambiguouslife.blogspot.com/2017/02/an-open-letter-to-kansas-senator-jerry.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Becky Carleton)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1498105551688934461.post-6640353208555811469Tue, 24 Jan 2017 19:43:00 +00002017-01-25T08:52:51.384-06:00abortioncurrent eventsinfertilitynewsparentingpersonal is politicalpoliticsOn abortion Let me be clear. My views on abortion are complex. I am not Pro-Abortion, in fact, my wish is that more people had access to reliable birth control to make abortions as rare as possible. I am Pro-Life because I don't believe the government has the right to execute its citizens, and I am therefore against the death penalty. I am also Pro-Life because I believe that the fetus growing inside my body is a baby, more than just a clump of cells, and he/she/they should be given a chance to live, if possible.<br /><br />But pregnancy and abortion are incredibly complex issues because they involve the LIFE of a living, breathing human person: the biological mother. The government has no right to tell us what to do with our bodies. If I experienced an unwanted pregnancy, I would seek the advice of my doctor, my partner, my spiritual advisor, and myself. Not Representative Kevin Yoder. Not Senators Moran or Roberts. Not Donald Trump.<br /><br />It's sadly laughable to think I could ever experience an unwanted pregnancy because Will and I both went into this marriage wanting a large family, because I spent two years and many visits to the fertility specialist to conceive and deliver Katie, because I've tried unsuccessfully to give Katie a sibling for a decade. My last miscarriage was January 22, 2007, a date I'll likely never forget. I look at women with their big pregnant bellies with a twinge of jealousy, especially when they've got a horde of other kids, especially when I catch them yelling at their kids in the grocery store. I'll take those kids off your hands, I think.<br /><br />But I have no right to tell another person what to do with her body. In an ideal world, everyone would have access to family planning and all babies would be born wanted and loved by parents who have the financial and emotional support to raise them well.<br /><br />But it's not an ideal world. It's a wholly flawed, chaotic world, and it's up to us to make it the best we can with what we've got.<br /><br />Yes, I wish more people would give their babies up for adoption rather than having an abortion, but I've also experienced just how difficult pregnancy and labor can be. I had to have an emergency C-section and could very well have died in childbirth had I not had access to high quality, and tremendously expensive, medical care. I know first hand what it feels like to live with postpartum depression. I know how risky bringing a new life into this world is. I could NEVER force another person to do something with her own body, especially something that could potentially kill her.<br /><br />So when I read <a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/emaoconnor/federal-6-week-abortion-ban?bffbpolitics&amp;utm_term=4ldqpht#4ldqpht">this</a> news post, I immediately became alarmed by this paragraph:<br /><br />"The bill contains exceptions when abortion is necessary to save the life of the mother — 'but not including psychological or emotional conditions' that 'arise from the pregnancy itself,' such as severe depression or suicidal tendencies. The law also does not contain exceptions for pregnancy by rape or incest..."<br /><br />So, God forbid, a twelve year old girl is raped and becomes pregnant with her rapist's child. She experiences severe depression and suicidal thoughts. Under this bill, she would have to seek out a back alley abortion in order to help herself, to protect herself, to save herself. Is this the kind of world we want to live in?<br /><br />Not me.<br /><div><br /></div>http://thisambiguouslife.blogspot.com/2017/01/not-me-my-views-about-abortion.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Becky Carleton)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1498105551688934461.post-4893873751479868865Wed, 30 Nov 2016 05:16:00 +00002016-11-29T23:16:39.826-06:00autodidactismchildren's librarianeducationKatielibraryPTSDpublic librariespublic schoolA pretty good lessonSome new fancy arts-focused private school is opening up near us next year. My immediate reaction when I read the news was, hmm wouldn't it be cool if Katie got to go to an arts-focused school. For shits and grins I checked to see how much the tuition at this new school is. $10,000 per year. Katie will be in sixth grade next year, so if we enrolled her in this private school through high school we would have spent $70,000 BEFORE she'd head off to college, where, more and more, I hear you can barely get a degree without going about that much into debt.<br /><br />It pisses me off that kids with wealthy parents get to attend whatever school best suits them, while those of us who live paycheck to paycheck pretty much have two options: our neighborhood public school or homeschooling. I don't have the personality to homeschool well. I'm not good with routines and plans and anything higher than fifth-grade math. I like variety. I like new ideas. I like librarianship. I like kids. I like singing storytime songs with preschoolers. I try to sing with my fifth-grader. I'm lucky if she rolls her eyes at me. It means she's looked up from the screen long enough to acknowledge my presence.<br /><br />Plus, I like the idea of public school. You're guessing I'm a fan of public school because I myself went to public school? People tend to gravitate toward the known even when the unknown might be better. But I had a shitty public school education. I'm not blaming it entirely on the school. I was at the worst point in my life, emotionally-speaking, and my teachers and parents just did not understand me. I could have benefited from twice-weekly therapy sessions with a wise, trusted Judd Hirsch-type shrink. Instead, I sat on the sofa under covers, sick day from school, watching "Ordinary People" for the hundredth time. I've seen a handful or two of therapists a dozen or so times from the time I was diagnosed with anorexia at age eleven until the last one I saw after my brother died five years ago. I stuck with none of them longer than a month or two, tops. Again, I'm bad at math. What it adds up to is this: my high school experience could have been better had I not tried to deal with my PTSD by drinking bottles of Boone's Farm Strawberry Hill with my equally self-destructive misfit friends and, instead, had I gotten professional help for my mental illness.<br /><br />Anyhoo, I try not to let my past ruin Katie's future. Just because I had a miserable experience in public school doesn't mean she has to. So we're giving it a try, public school. I like the idea of staying where you are and making your surroundings better just by being there, doing your little bit. Instead of paying a private school ten thousand dollars for my one kid, I'd rather send that money to public schools so the entire community of kids has the opportunity to flourish.<br /><br />And I get it. I want what's best for my kid. I want my kid to grow up healthy and strong and empathetic. A critical thinker. I want her to be a good citizen. A good spouse. A good parent. Someone who makes this world better just by her being in it, doing her little bit. I want her to be curious about the world and question the hard questions and focus on the details that matter and find herself by losing herself in creative expression. I want an education for my child that best suits her. I wish I'd had that kind of education. But I didn't. So I want it for my child.<br /><br />Instead of a great education, I had the library. One good thing my parents did was take me to the public library at least once a month, often more. My mom and dad both read. Mostly mysteries and entertaining reads. I like the heavier stuff. More emotional. More philosophical. More suited to me. I read self-help books by wise women such as Harriet Lerner and Linda Bacon. I read fiction about dysfunctional families by amazing healers and creative thinkers such as Alice Walker, Anne Tyler, and Alison Bechdel. I've muddled through. I take medication. I treat my body well. I do what I'm passionate about. I worry less about what others think of me and more about how I can leave this place in better shape than I found it.<br /><br />But I can't afford to send my kid to the best schools, tailored to suit her best. So we make do with what we have.<br /><br />I bring her home library books. Will teaches her sciencey and life skills lessons just in their day-to-day interactions. We give her lots of time to explore her own interests. We listen to her. We laugh with her. We send her off to public school where she has her good days and her not so good days and we hope for the best.<br /><br />Last night Katie and I went to the public school board meeting to show our support for the speakers addressing the superintendent and board members about <a href="http://thisambiguouslife.blogspot.com/2016/11/an-open-letter-to-shawnee-mission.html">the safety pin issue</a>. It was a great education. As we left, Katie said, "It's nice to see so many adults sticking up for us kids, trying to make our schools the best they can be."<br /><br />Several times during the board meeting the speakers said, "our children are watching" and when they would say this Katie would raise her hand and shake her head <i>yes</i>.<br /><br />"I'm glad you got to witness it. We can do that anytime you like. If you ever want to talk to the leaders about ideas you have for ways to improve the schools, we can always go to the board meetings and you can talk to them, or I can talk to them for you if you'd like," I said.<br /><br />"Thanks, Mom," Katie said. "Mom, you know what I like about my school? I know that the Blue Valley schools have more money and stuff. So they can have gifted teachers in every school. Instead of having to bus their gifted kids to one school that has the gifted teachers like they do with me. But you know what? Us gifted kids have to come up with ideas for ways to improve things with what we've got. And that's a pretty good lesson," my wise fifth-grader said.<br /><br />I think her public education is working out just fine.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br />http://thisambiguouslife.blogspot.com/2016/11/a-pretty-good-lesson.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Becky Carleton)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1498105551688934461.post-8751369458691566660Tue, 22 Nov 2016 15:53:00 +00002016-11-22T15:11:37.011-06:00Donald TrumpeducationJohnson County KansasKansaspoliticspublic schoolsexual abusesexual assaultAn open letter to the Shawnee Mission School District regarding safety pins in the classroom<div style="font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 17px;">I am the parent of a student in the Shawnee Mission School District, a taxpayer, and a PTA member. Our daughter is in the Enhanced Learning program, Y Club, and choir. My family has been active, attending and making treats for most class parties and participating in after-school programs. I volunteered every Friday morning for Ms. Sharp's kindergarten class as the Reading Helper. I've been a parent helper on numerous field trips. Our daughter is in fifth grade and has attended the same school since kindergarten: Apache Innovative School.</div><div style="font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 17px;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 17px;">My husband attended Comanche Elementary, Westridge Middle School, and Shawnee Mission West High School where he sang with the Madrigals and won numerous awards. I attended Milburn Junior High and Shawnee Mission North High School. Needless to say, we are proud Shawnee Mission School District alumni and parents. Many of our friends have moved south so their kids can attend the better-funded Blue Valley School District, but we have chosen to stick it out with SMSD. For the most part, we are happy with that decision.</div><div style="font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 17px;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 17px;">I have a concern about something I read in The Shawnee Mission Post regarding the ban from teachers wearing safety pins:&nbsp;<a href="http://shawneemissionpost.com/2016/11/22/shawnee-mission-move-to-ban-teachers-from-wearing-safety-pins-after-election-causes-swift-backlash-among-parents-57992">http://shawneemissionpost.com/2016/11/22/shawnee-mission-move-to-ban-teachers-from-wearing-safety-pins-after-election-causes-swift-backlash-among-parents-57992</a></div><div style="font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 17px;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 17px;">I wholeheartedly agree with district parent Jennifer Howerton's statement:</div><div style="font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 17px;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 17px;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“It’s a statement that the wearer will stand up against anyone who uses the election as a validation of their white supremacist, or misogynistic, or racist, or homophobic feelings and acts upon them,” Howerton said. “The wearer is a safe person (hence safety pin) who can be relied upon to help. The district clearly lacks willingness to understand this gesture. This is a slippery slope, where uninformed parents can complain to the district, and the district makes a decision not based on facts.”</span></div><div style="font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 17px;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br /></span></div><div style="font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 17px;">There are many great things about educating our gifted child in the Shawnee Mission School District. We could homeschool her, or send her to private school, but I think it's important for our child to learn how to get along in a world full of different people. I am a librarian, so I could easily bring books and videos home for our child to consume, but sending our child to public school gives her a broader education. She learns from teachers with multiple viewpoints and interacts with a wide array of people whose experiences enrich her life. One of the things I like so much about her school is the diversity of our daughter's peers. Our daughter is white, middle class, and Presbyterian. She has friends who are biracial, Latino, African-American, and Asian. Some come from families that are more lower class than our family, some more upper class. Some are mainline Christian, evangelical Christian, Catholic, Jewish, Muslim, and some are irreligious. All of them are kids I have grown to love as my own, many since they were little five year olds reading to me in Ms. Sharp's kindergarten class.</div><div style="font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 17px;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 17px;">I am concerned that as our children grow they will begin to feel lost, misunderstood, and alone. Especially kids who come from historically marginalized groups. Our electoral college will vote for Donald Trump--a man who is on record bullying the disabled, Mexicans, Muslims, African-Americans, people in the LGBTQ community, and women--to be the President of this great nation. I am a sexual assault survivor. I live with PTSD, and the election of a man who brags about grabbing women by their genitals triggers my anxiety in ways only others who have experienced sexual assault can fully comprehend. If I were still a student in the Shawnee Mission School District, I would find comfort in the subtle sign of safety that is a teacher or custodian or principal wearing a safety pin. I would feel like I could trust them. I would feel like my experiences and concerns about the world are valid and understood.&nbsp;</div><div style="font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 17px;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 17px;">The purpose of a great public school education is to raise citizens who think critically and who are ready to get to work to make our community the best it can be. I encourage you to rethink the decision to ban educators from wearing a simple safety pin. Our children, all of our children, deserve to feel safe at school.</div><div style="font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 17px;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 17px;">Sincerely,&nbsp;</div><div style="font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 17px;"><span style="font-family: uictfonttextstylebody; font-size: 17px;">Becky Carleton&nbsp;</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: uictfonttextstylebody; font-size: 17px;">Voice your opinion at the next board meeting:</span><br /><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i><a href="http://www.smsd.org/publicinfo/pages/boe.aspx" rel="nofollow" style="color: #365899; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank"><br /></a><a href="http://www.smsd.org/publicinfo/pages/boe.aspx">Board of education meetings</a>:&nbsp;</i></span><i style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="text_exposed_show" style="display: inline;">fourth Monday of every month at 7 p.m.</span></i></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>next meeting:&nbsp;</i></span><i style="font-family: inherit;">Monday, November 28 at 7pm</i></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i></i></span></blockquote><br /><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>McEachen Administrative Center board rooms<br />7235 Antioch Road<br />Shawnee Mission, KS 66204<br />(913) 993-6200</i></span></blockquote><br /><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>"The board values maintaining communication with all constituents. The public is urged to contact board members..."</i></span></blockquote></div>http://thisambiguouslife.blogspot.com/2016/11/an-open-letter-to-shawnee-mission.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Becky Carleton)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1498105551688934461.post-5631856158069853001Sat, 19 Nov 2016 03:48:00 +00002016-11-19T09:03:32.242-06:00classfamilyidentitypoliticsDo I live in a bubble?<span style="font-family: inherit;">Take <a href="http://www.pbs.org/newshour/making-sense/do-you-live-in-a-bubble-a-quiz-2/">this quiz</a> before you read further. It's pretty fascinating. It's called <i>Do you live in a bubble? A quiz</i></span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">Bubbles have been on the brain ever since Trump won the Presidential election in <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2016/11/election-results-2016-clinton-trump-231070">one of the biggest political upsets in history</a>.</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">According to this quiz, which was published by PBS, I live in an upper-middle class bubble. At first I wanted to argue that no I don't--I'm just middle class, just two generations off the farm--but the fact that I even took a PBS quiz in the first place makes that argument pretty pitiful.</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">My quiz results: "A first-generation upper-middle-class person with middle-class parents."</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">Honestly I thought I'm more second-generation middle-class. I just happen to be a big honkin nerd who prefers to read and geek out on the internet over watching TV and mainstream movies. Less classy, more nerdy. I'm a paraprofessional librarian. No MLS for me. Just a love of lifelong learning and a passion for institutions that help educate and enrich people's lives.</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">Which is harder than you'd think. It challenging to help ALL SORTS of people. Rich and poor. Black and brown and golden and peachy. Pissed off and joyful. Readers and video gamers. Often the same person. You just never know who the person is that's going to ask the next question and you have to be prepared to help them if they're a business man in a suit or a two year old with a booger in his nose.</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">Once a patron called Telephone Reference and asked something about <i>The Big Bang Theory</i>, meaning the TV show, which I had never heard of, and so my answer had to do with <i>The Big Bang Theory</i>, meaning the origin of the universe, which he had never heard of. We were both so confused! Two bubbles collided on that day.</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">But the more I think about it, maybe I am upper-middle class. I do loathe Walmart. I tolerate Target, but my favorite place to buy my clothes is this thrift shop near an affluent neighborhood. Rich folks donate the best stuff. I've found some amazing pieces from Talbots and Lands' End there at a price that doesn't break my frugal librarian budget. When I'm desperate I do buy from Lands' End online--if it's on sale. It's like, I don't have the money to be "upper-middle" but I have the taste of someone in that category. And I don't mean to put positive connotations on the word "taste". Taste schmaste. I wholeheartedly believe people should ignore fashion trends and what society says is proper attire and wear what they love because they feel great in it.</span><br /><blockquote class="tr_bq"><i><span style="font-family: inherit;">"Refuse to wear uncomfortable pants, even if they make you look really thin. Promise me you’ll never wear pants that bind or tug or hurt, pants that have an opinion about how much you’ve just eaten. The pants may be lying! There is way too much lying and scolding going on politically right now without your pants getting in on the act, too." --Anne Lamott</span></i></blockquote><span style="font-family: inherit;">From what I've been reading the main difference between lower-middle class and upper-middle class is education level. I am not the most well-educated person if what you consider to be well-educated is a college degree. But I've always been a big reader, a deep thinker, and a person who questions authority. An autodidact with an attitude.</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">I have an associate's degree from the community college. Between that, my hard work and experience I landed my cushy children's librarian gig. I am incredibly lucky to have worked for the same public library for 23 years--virtually my entire adult life. But because I don't have a bachelor's degree, let alone a master's degree, if I lost my awesome job it would be difficult to find another one as good and as decently paying as the one I have now. I can't just pick up and move to San Francisco on a whim, so here I am, living with my man in Kansas.</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">I married a man from a lower-middle class family. He didn't go to college (even though he's one of the most intelligent people I know) but his brother did. His mom drives a forklift and his dad is a retired manager of a pizza chain. (I knew who Jimmie Johnson is because my father-in law is a huge NASCAR fan.) My husband has an open-mind, a quick wit, and he's deeply curious about the universe and all that makes it tick. He reads, but not textbooks. Mostly Fantasy and Science Fiction, but occasionally a nonfiction book about a man who escapes a detention center in North Korea. He watches things like <i>Parks and Rec</i> and <i>Metalocalypse</i> on TV in his free time when he's not fixing our dishwasher or retiling the roof. He's a renaissance man. I dig him a lot.</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">I have a funny family history, class wise. A big mix of lower-and-upper-middle class. My maternal great-grandfather was a doctor (a chiropractor) who loved Victor Hugo so much he named one of his daughters Jean Valjean, only they pronounced it Jeen Valjeen. My maternal great-grandmother was a stay at home mom who lived in the country and baked the best lemon meringue pie according to my mom. My maternal grandfather was a plumber who read, both fiction and nonfiction, incessantly. He probably would have gotten his PhD had he not been orphaned at age 11 and kicked out of school after eighth grade because he couldn't afford the textbooks. My grandmother was a stay at home mom until her kids left home and then she owned a beauty salon. My mom was a stay at home mom until she divorced her first husband (a salesman) and married my dad (an office manager/accountant) who got laid off in the seventies and so my mom went back to work as a dental assistant, a sales clerk at Wards, and later as a bookkeeper for a dental company. No one in my family, except for my great-grandfather and one of my five siblings has had a college education. Well, and me, with my little ole two year degree that took me eleven years to get around to finishing.</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">My dad's side of the family is much more cut and dried. My dad is a first-generation middle class man from a working class family. His dad grew up on a farm, the oldest of 10 kids, and he moved to the city (St. Joseph, MO) to work in the slaughterhouse. His wife, my grandmother, grew up on literally the farm next door to my grandfather. She was the oldest of twelve and she moved to the city with her husband and one-year old son, my dad. She was a stay-at-home mom, but their family struggled to pay their bills, especially since my grandfather struggled with alcoholism.</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">My dad got drafted into the army, and when he got out he used the GI Bill to pay for an accounting certificate from a local business college and went to work for a truck line. After twenty years, he was the office manager and made $20,000 in 1970, enough to support his first wife and daughter, his second wife and kids, and have enough to buy himself a bitchin Camaro when his mid-life crisis kicked in. Then he got laid off and my mom had to work to make enough money for us to afford our mortgage payment. I think deep down my dad felt ashamed. Men of that generation took far too much pride in their occupations and not enough in being a kind, decent man.</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">I married a guy who makes less money than I do, but he does way more housework and upkeep on the house. We split child-rearing about fifty-fifty. Maybe sixty-forty, but only because I'm a tiny bit more of a helicopter parent than he is.</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">So, what class am I?</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">My favorite restaurant is Cafe Sebastienne. It's local, and located inside the Kemper Contemporary Museum of Art. Definitely upper-middle.</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">My second favorite restaurant is Elsa's Ethiopian restaurant. Also local. &nbsp;Located in an up-and-coming mixed-use, affluent neighborhood. More upper-middle.</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">But the first time I ever got a pedicure was a month ago when I had to take my eighty-nine year old dad in to get his nasty ass diabetic tough as NAILS toenails trimmed and I thought what the heck, why not. Plus, Dad paid. Frugal!</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">I get my hair cut about once a year at Great Clips. Definitely lower-middle.</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">I shop at thrift stores (lower) but I buy Talbot's and Lands' End (upper).</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">I read incessantly and stay well informed of current events. I hate watching TV. It bores me to tears. Unless it's <i>Futurama</i> or <i>Portlandia</i> or <i>Bob's Burgers</i> (upper, upper, and more upper.)</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">I want my kid to go to college because I think she'll love learning ALL THE THINGS, not because I want her to train for some high-wage job. I'd rather she be broke and work with Doctors' Beyond Borders than get a business degree and make a living by making a profit off of other people.</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">I love art, and philosophy, and political science. I hate shopping, and beef, and reality TV. But I also don't mind hanging out with smokers and drinkers and people who place more value in authenticity than wallet size. I don't think that having a college degree means you are necessarily smarter than someone who lacks a college degree. When my blinds broke I didn't hire someone to replace them. I hung blankets over the windows and appreciated the light streaming through the colorful fabric.</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">I'm a blend. I'm more than a label. I'm a mixture. I'm me.</span>http://thisambiguouslife.blogspot.com/2016/11/do-i-live-in-bubble.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Becky Carleton)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1498105551688934461.post-2697416990652128601Tue, 15 Nov 2016 02:40:00 +00002016-11-15T11:48:47.240-06:002016 Electionpoliticssexual abusesexual assaultSwept under the rug<a href="http://www.newsweek.com/2016/11/18/hillary-clinton-presidential-election-voter-gender-gap-520579.html">This</a> is why I'm still grieving. It feels like the issue of sexual assault has been swept under the rug, just as I was getting excited to see so many women speak out about their abuse. I'm afraid survivors will stop speaking out for fear that no one will believe them, or worse, nobody cares. From the article:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">"For many women, the presidential campaign had an emotional dynamic that was more immediate and uglier. One in six American women has been sexually assaulted...In day-after interviews, women who voted for him said they didnt believe his accusers or weren’t bothered enough by his sexist remarks to vote for Hillary."</blockquote><br /><br /><br /><br />http://thisambiguouslife.blogspot.com/2016/11/swept-under-rug.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Becky Carleton)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1498105551688934461.post-5907825353472612529Sat, 12 Nov 2016 02:04:00 +00002016-11-11T22:47:27.103-06:002016 ElectionDonald Trumppoliticsposttraumatic stress disorderPTSDsecretssexual abusesexual assaultvoicewritingFeelings are substantive <blockquote class="quoteBody" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px; padding-left: 25px; text-indent: -30px;"><blockquote class="tr_bq">"You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better."</blockquote></blockquote><div class="quoteDetails" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px; padding-left: 25px; padding-top: 10px;"><h2 style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; line-height: 20px; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><span class="quoteAuthor" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7113.Anne_Lamott" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #104b8b; text-decoration: none;">Anne Lamott</a>,&nbsp;</span><span class="quoteBook" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12543.Bird_by_Bird" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #104b8b; text-decoration: none;">Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life</a></span></h2></div>I've been uber chatty online this week. Under normal circumstances I'm an opinionated badass activist, so I'm prone to many social media posts per day. Sharing my feelings and thoughts on important issues is the most therapeutic way I've found to stave off the panic attacks and depression I've lived with since I was a child.<br /><br />The election of a man who brags about grabbing women by the pussies has upped my anxiety and depression, and therefore increased my social media rants. To the dismay of one of my closest family members, who sent me this message:<br /><br />" Status updates. I had 34 from you today. &nbsp;I quit reading the last twenty for now. All they said was how you felt. &nbsp;Sorry to be so mean but I'm doing less Facebook now. &nbsp;I do read your substance ones."<br /><br />This is my response.<br /><br />Feelings are substantive. I have learned as a sexual abuse survivor that when I share my feelings with others I feel less alone. I've had so many people I've lost count reach out to me and tell me how the feelings I share on social media have helped them feel less alone. I will not let anyone silence my voice. If you don't care to read about my feelings, unfollowing me will turn off notifications when I make a post. Or, simply block or unfriend me on Facebook and we can go back to having our conversations in person, on the phone, and via email.<br /><br />You once told me that I have your permission to write anything I want about you, and I appreciate that. I also intend to write anything I want about myself. I don't expect you to be my audience or my fan. You are my family and I love you. But I won't stop sharing my feelings on social media because I also love myself.http://thisambiguouslife.blogspot.com/2016/11/feelings-are-substantive.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Becky Carleton)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1498105551688934461.post-345574159993633077Thu, 10 Nov 2016 04:02:00 +00002016-11-09T22:03:49.748-06:002016 ElectionDonald Trumpelectionspersonal is politicalpoliticspresidentpresidentssexual abusesexual assaultNo!As a champion for underdogs, the results of any presidential election in favor of a republican usually upset me because it's generally not the party of social justice. But I didn't feel panicky when Ronald Reagan won re-election in 1984, just pissed off. Neither did I feel panicky when George HW Bush or George W Bush won their elections, just super effing annoyed.<br /><br />I was pissed and annoyed because it meant I'd have to work harder at being the badass social justice advocate I am, but I didn't feel panicky because, for the most part, I was an ally to the underdogs I championed rather than the direct recipient of the social justice causes I was fighting. As a white, middle class, cis-gender person, my fight to elevate kids out of poverty and to achieve racial and ethnic harmony didn't feel particularly personal, just like the righteous thing to do. I've always been a fan of how Jesus stood up for the least and I felt called to follow his lead.<br /><br />As a woman I've always been drawn to feminist causes, just as by being bisexual I've felt called to act for fairness to all people in the LGBTQ community. But because of my whiteness and my middle-class status and my ability to pass as straight, I rarely felt terrified of my racist, classist, sexist, homophobic brethren. I felt pity for them. Anger. Sadness. But not terror.<br /><br />But this election is different. Millions of my fellow Americans voted for a man who trash talked women who didn't live up to his standards of beauty, calling them fat dogs and worse. I'm a fat nonstandard beauty, so Trumps words against women stung. Still, I didn't feel much more than disgust. Not terror. But when I found out that Trump bragged about grabbing women by the pussies, I felt terror. Panic. Flashbacks to when I was a five-year old girl getting my pussy grabbed by my older brother and our neighbor.<br /><br />Yes, I am angry and sad about the results of this election because of what it means to the Muslim families that will be broken up because the person with the most power in our nation thinks that they don't belong here. And the LGBTQ families. And the Mexican-American families.<br /><br />But as a sexual assault survivor, the election of Donald Trump is terrifying. The fact that so many of my friends and family and neighbors voted for someone who brags about sexual assault is terrifying. Triggering. Traumatic. It feels like my country has told me to shut the fuck up. Silenced into submission.<br /><br />No!<br /><br />http://thisambiguouslife.blogspot.com/2016/11/no.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Becky Carleton)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1498105551688934461.post-5690445272441817003Wed, 26 Oct 2016 15:36:00 +00002016-10-26T21:29:58.306-05:00fatfat phobiaHealth at Every Size®health insurancehealthcareMy Big Fat Voice<div class="tr_bq">I dig this quote:</div><br /><blockquote>''I think midlife is when the universe gently places her hands upon your shoulders, pulls you close, and whispers in your ear:&nbsp;I’m not screwing around. It’s time. All of this pretending and performing – these coping mechanisms that you’ve developed to protect yourself from feeling inadequate and getting hurt – has to go.&nbsp;Your armor is preventing you from growing into your gifts. I understand that you needed these protections when you were small. I understand that you believed your armor could help you secure all of the things you needed to feel worthy of love and belonging, but you’re still searching and you’re more lost than ever.&nbsp;Time is growing short. There are unexplored adventures ahead of you. You can’t live the rest of your life worried about what other people think. You were born worthy of love and belonging. Courage and daring are coursing through you. You were made to live and love with your whole heart. It’s time to show up and be seen.''&nbsp;~ Brené Brown</blockquote><br />&nbsp;I did something brave yesterday. I attended a focus-group for my employer-paid healthcare. It was a candid discussion of our wellness incentive program. If you qualify for the program, you get something like fifty bucks deducted from what you pay for health insurance. I'm no financial expert. I don't really understand all the details, but basically it goes like this:<br /><br />You go to the doctor for a biometric screening during your annual wellness exam. They draw your blood for lab tests. They test your glucose, cholesterol, blood pressure--the usual suspects. You discuss your lab results with your doctor, who signs a form that you return to the HR department. If you "pass" three of the five tests, you get a discount on your insurance. If you don't, you can sign up for health classes and explore alternative ways to prove you're trying to save Big Insurance the most money possible by being a good little employee and letting a corporation dictate how you live your life.<br /><br />The reason I wanted to attend the focus group is because I wanted to argue that they eliminate one of the five tests: your BMI or waist-circumference. BMI is just bad science. One of the other focus group attendees pointed out that because a couple of her co-workers were muscular, their weight put them into the "obese" category on the BMI scale. I pointed out that as county employees we're required to take harassment training in which we learn that it's inappropriate to discus our bodies at work, and yet having our wellness program focus on our bodies, specifically those of us who have big bellies, causes anxiety in the workplace for many of us.<br /><br />I talked about the book <a href="http://www.lindabacon.org/haesbook/">Health at Every Size</a> by Linda Bacon. I've written reviews of the book and talked to individual people about it, but this was the first time I talked about it in front of a group of strangers. I was scared. I was brave. I'm glad I had the opportunity to let my big fat voice be heard. It felt good to show up and be seen.http://thisambiguouslife.blogspot.com/2016/10/my-big-fat-voice.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Becky Carleton)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1498105551688934461.post-2762998545647517970Wed, 21 Sep 2016 15:30:00 +00002016-09-21T13:20:44.559-05:00current eventsracismwhite privilegeMy White FaceI generally prefer to use this platform to bash all the people in my life who have done me wrong. Today I am going to focus on my own wrongdoing.<br /><br />I was twenty, twenty-one, maybe. So we're talking twenty-five years ago. I was not in a good place. I was two years into a three year relationship that was doomed. We fought all the time, and it wasn't always her fault. We were both emotional basket cases. I was a community college dropout, working as a nanny. I'd been out on my own for a couple of years after my mom had kicked me out of the house for fucking up in school. Barely an adult myself, I had developed a deep hatred of authority figures after spending my adolescence fighting with my asshole father. One of my shrinks tried to tell me I had bipolar disorder and put me on Lithium, but it made me feel like a zombie. At least Angry Becky got shit done. Zombie Becky was worthless and there was NO fucking way I was going to rely on Mom and Dad to support me. I had to make it on my own.<br /><br />It was winter. My girlfriend and I lived in midtown Kansas City because it was cheap and, at that time, it was the only place in the Greater Kansas City area where gays and lesbians felt safe, or at least safe-ish. The family that I nannied for lived in southern Johnson County, about a thirty minute drive on a good day. This was not a good day. It had snowed the night before, and I was running late, for no other reason than I was a worthless piece of shit who'd stayed up too late the night before, probably writing in my diary or working on my stupid fucking unpublishable novel or some such shit.<br /><br />I was supposed to be at my bosses' house by 7:00am so that they could leave for their upstanding citizen jobs. He was a lawyer, she was a paralegal. They had a twelve-year-old, a two-year-old, and a newborn. She was one of those supermom types, left over from the eighties. Mall bangs and everything. I'm not shitting you: after she gave birth and returned from the hospital, she was up early the very next day exercising to some celebrity workout video in their home gym. I was like some fat fucking babushka over in the corner of their "hearth room" balancing the new baby on my belly as I fed her a bottle and sang Frère Jacques "again, again!" to keep the two-year-old occupied long enough to stay out of her mom's frosted hair.<br /><br />It had snowed heavily overnight and many of the streets were still unplowed. Even though it was freezing outside, I had the driver's side window to my Ford Festiva cracked to help the windshield from completely fogging up. There were streaks everywhere from my gloved hand trying to wipe away the condensation. The heater/defrost on my tin-box car barely worked. I guess they don't need 'em much in Mexico in the factory where it was made. I'd spent a whole two minutes of what should have been a twenty minute job scraping the snow and ice off my windows because I was in such a hurry to get to work.<br /><br />I was about ten minutes from their house when I noticed red lights flashing through the four-inch section of my back window that I'd managed to scrape off. I slowed down and pulled over as far to the right as I could manage on the snow-covered street to give the cop some room to pass me on his way to wherever the hell he was going. As far as I knew, there weren't too many criminals in this affluent neck of the woods. At least not the kind that got caught.<br /><br />It took me a moment to realize he wasn't going to pass me.<br /><br />"Nooooooooooooo!" I shouted.<br /><br />He was after me.<br /><br />"What the hell did I do?!" I pulled over on a side street where the snow was even deeper. My pathetic car could barely make it. I put the gear shift into neutral, pulled the emergency break, and killed the engine. I could feel sweat developing under my wool cap. No matter how cold it is, I always get sweaty when I get upset.<br /><br />The cop knocked on the driver's side window.<br /><br />I didn't even bother to roll it down any further. I was so pissed this guy was going to make me even later to my job than I already was. "What did I do?" I shouted through the three-inch crack.<br /><br />"Umm, could you roll down your window, please?" the cop asked. He sounded a bit taken aback. Like he wasn't expecting to encounter any shrieking banshees in this neighborhood. This guy had no idea.<br /><br />"Why? What did I do?" I asked. I could feel my face flush like it did whenever my dad would start in on me.<br /><br />"Umm, well," he paused and began using an ice scraper on my window.<br /><br />"What are you DOING? I NEED TO GET TO WORK?!" I shouted.<br /><br />"Hold up, now. Lemme get some of this ice off your window..."<br /><br />I cut him off, "Man, I NEED to get to work. My boss is gonna yell at me. Can you just tell me what I did?!"<br /><br />He chuckled a little and then proceeded to begin scraping my front windshield. He raised his voice, not in anger, but so I could hear him through my still barely cracked window.<br /><br />"You do realize that I could give you a ticket for driving this thing in such hazardous circumstances, don't you?" he said. "Did you even bother to scrape your windows before you headed out?"<br /><br />Great, now I'm getting fucking lectured from a cop.<br /><br />"YES, I DID," I gritted my teeth. "But I'm in a hurry and my defroster doesn't work very good."<br /><br />"OK. OK," he said, shooing his hand at me like I was some annoying fly. He'd scraped off my entire front windshield by then and was working around to the passenger's side.<br /><br />I sat there and fumed as he finished up the back. Thinking back on it now, what an ungrateful, spoiled brat. Here I was, sitting there like a pissy bitch while Officer Friendly made sure that my car was road safe.<br /><br />"OK," he said when he made his way back to the driver's side. "That oughtta do it." He thumped my roof and said, "be careful out there" as he stepped away from my car.<br /><br />I didn't even thank him.<br /><br />I rolled up my window and made a big dramatic exit, my spinning tires flicking grey snow all over the officer as I maneuvered my car back onto the main road and sped up to make up for lost time.<br /><br />There's been a lot of incidents in the news lately of young black men getting pulled over for minor traffic violations and ending up dead, shot by yet another bad cop. Maybe they were disrespectful. Maybe they were uncooperative, although most of the video evidence I've watched shows otherwise. If I had lived in an era of constant video surveillance I have a feeling my video evidence could have been used against me in court, or at least the court of public opinion. I was an ungrateful, spoiled brat. I didn't even get a ticket, let alone shot and killed. Despite my horrible behavior, my cop did his job helping me out, making me safe. Even if some would argue I didn't deserve it.<br /><br />Maybe the cop who helped me on that shitty, snowy day was a good cop, and he would have treated anybody the same as he did me. Or maybe he would have treated me differently if, when first peering through the crack in the driver's side window, he had seen a black face instead of my white face.<br /><div><br /></div>http://thisambiguouslife.blogspot.com/2016/09/my-white-face_21.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Becky Carleton)0